Health Minister Ayesha Verrall has accused National’s health spokesman Shane Reti of mis-using numbers to try to beat up the scale of the exodus of nurses from New Zealand’s health sector.

When announcing new policy to help pay new nurses’ student loans and attract more nurses from overseas, Reti and leader Christopher Luxon claimed that since Labour got into power in 2017, “almost 19,000 nurses have left the public health system”.

However, Verrall said that was “plain wrong and he knows it.

“The data Shane Reti is referring to is the number of nurses who have both left or moved into another nursing job such as moving from Whanganui to work in Auckland, or moving from a hospitals to work in aged residential care or for a GP. Many have not left the health system, they are just in a different part of it.

 “When I provided Shane Reti this data, I told him that. But he chose not to mention that when he released it publicly.”

She said the total number of nurses employed by Te Whatu Ora had actually increased between March 2017 and December 2022 by 4108 full-time equivalent nurses – a 19 per cent increase.

“I’m not saying that’s enough, and I’m very aware of the pressure our nurses are under. But our starting position needs to be based on facts and not headline-grabbing untruths from the Opposition.”

When asked, Reti said National had made it “very clear” that the number included transferred and re-employed nurses.

National’s initial press statement on the 19,000 figure had included a note at the very bottom saying that the data “does not take into account those who have been transferred or have be re-employed”.

However, that was not mentioned in the body of the press release in which Reti claimed “New data shows that almost 19,000 nurses have left over the last five years under Labour”.

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"Plain wrong and he knows it" - Health Minister Ayesha Verrall accuses National Party spokesman Shane Reti of misleading on nurse exodus. Photo / NZME composite

Nor was it mentioned when Luxon used the number to criticise Labour’s record while announcing National’s new policy package aimed at improving nursing retention rates on Sunday.

Reti said that another clear sign nurses were leaving was in the statistics of those who did not renew their practising certificates. Those figures, also provided by Verrall to Reti, show the numbers increased sharply over the last year from between 3000 and 3300 a year since 2018 to 4554 in the year ended March 2023. He estimated about 1000 were nurses who were retiring.

The 19,000 figure is a tally of the annual breakdown of the number of nurses who have left nursing roles in each district health board - figures provided by Verrall in response to questions from Reti.

However, the information Verrall provided makes it clear that it does not mean all of the nurses in that sum have left the sector. The figures are a blunt measurement of nurses who have left a job - but includes those who have simply transferred or changed jobs to work in another district health board area.

It is not known how many had left the public sector completely.

The figures show the numbers have escalated especially since Covid-19, rising from 2963 in 2018 to 4752 in 2022.

Verrall did voice some approval of National’s policy, saying it was “great to see National get on board with caring about nurses” after delivering only a 15 per cent pay increase to them throughout its nine years in Government.

“Since we became the Government, graduate nurse base salaries have risen 35 per cent from $49,400 to $66,700 and the top step base salary for Registered Nurses has risen 43 per cent from $66,700 to $95,300.”

National’s policy would pay up to $4500 a year of the student loans of graduate nurses for their first five years, provided they agree to stay and work in New Zealand for that period.

Labour already has a voluntary bonding scheme for graduate nurses and midwives who take jobs in some areas which paid a total of about $14,000 over a period of five years - and even more for midwives.

However, that is only available to those who work in areas such as aged care, mental health or primary care, or in certain regions. This year, those regions are Wairoa, South Canterbury and the West Coast.

National’s policy would also allow nurses to come to New Zealand on six-month visas to find a job, rather than have to have a job before arriving. It would allow overseas nurses to bring in their immediate family as well.

Verrall disputed Luxon’s claim that Labour had not done enough to try to keep nurses in New Zealand or attract more from overseas.

The nursing shortage is estimated to be about 4000.

Figures provided to the Herald from the Government show that as at April 2022, 1249 nurses had been approved under the critical worker visa and 1115 had arrived in New Zealand. A further 1842 nurses who needed to undertake a course to convert their qualifications to New Zealand had also applied - and 1761 had arrived.

Luxon said the decision to put nurses on to the straight-to-residency immigration Green List had come too late and had given countries such as Australia a head start. Nurses had not been put on that list until December last year.